A/N: I'm trying my hand (mind?) at writing some Star Wars Fan Fiction. I've always been an avid Star Wars boy but am not the most knowledgeable (I know enough… I've go to save room though, for more important things!), having grown up with all the wicked PC games and Expanded Universe novels but never really thought of giving SW FanFic writing a go. A friend who "stumbled across this" (read: was snooping around my computer) thought this was interesting and told me to see what you guys think… well… here we are! This is semi-one-shot but depending on the response, I can write more (have written some more) for it if you guys like it. So, let me know what you think of…
The Hilt
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with LucasFilm/LucasArts Entertainment Corporation or any of the Expanded Universe Novels in which may/may not be mentioned herein this FanFiction writing piece. This is purely written for entertainment purposes. I own none of the copy-written material. I do, however, own the plot to this story r ;D
Spoilers are rife in this fic! This is set seconds after Mace Windu dies at the hands of Darth Sidious in Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith…
Chapter : If it fell into the wrong hands…
Down- down it fell. Flipping slowly enough to see flashes of its master's limp body, somersaulting and flailing awkwardly through the misty clouds.
Down.
Down.
Down.
The silver cylinder, once so powerful, so trusted, now fell through the windy atmosphere of Coruscant. The body of the master fell; his robes were scorched from the lightning damage of the Sith lord. Fluttering, the robes obscured the master's face.
Down.
Down.
And thoomp.
The small device landed, somewhat more softly than expected for a kilometer of free-falling, onto a mound of thickly disgusting, mashed up waste and excrement.
Perhaps only micro-seconds later, the body of the master landed, unfortunately, on to a rabble of dead droids and jagged pieces of rusted steel. His body remained entirely still. His robes flapped silently in the wind – which was now much softer and calmer on this very low level of the planet.
The hilt lay statically atop the mound of filth; the silver plating which had not been disgraced by the surrounding waste, shimmered mystically in the dim light.
A clip-clopping of heeled boots broke the calm.
A belching was heard, "yeah so I says to her, 'you know what? You can get your own damn money if you're so swept up in wanting new drapes'!"
"You said that Muvo?" a timid voice replied.
"'Course I did!" the belcher stated proudly, "I'm Muvo Bragg! And no third wife of mine is going to whine about drapes of all things when I'm down here shoveling s-"
"WHAT'S THAT?" screamed the timid one.
"SITH SPIT!" Muvo Bragg jumped, "let's get outta here boy! We didn't see nothin'! GOT IT?"
Even before the timid 'boy' could reply, Muvo waved a hand over a control panel. A lurching of gears and steel groaned to life as the room was slowly swallowed up. Great metallic doors on the roof of the complex, rusted from years of being exposed to the elements, closed over.
Muvo glanced quickly over at what had broken his gloating, taking in one last look at what he presumed, was the body of a Jedi Knight – dead. His plump fingers danced around the keypad and the door to the room closed shut; gears locked the metallic door in place.
He sighed, turning to the timid boy, "we don't know what went on here and we don't wanna know, got that boy?"
The boy nodded. Although he had lived his entire life in the proverbial 'bowels' of Coruscant, his exposure to the dead was limited at best – especially when the dead were people he so thoroughly respected.
"You go get out of here now and you say nothing boy!" Muvo bellowed, the loose skin around his neck, shaking with each roared word.
The boy nodded once more, turned and ran down the metallic corridor, his boots clip-clopping on the old steel. He turned right onto an old, rusted landing and stopped, staring quietly. A girl, no older than perhaps fifteen or sixteen sat on the edge of the landing, her legs kicking the air freely, the wind blowing against her face and hair.
Her hair was brown and quite straight, but often dirty from exhaustingly long days working. Her skin was paled slightly, as was the case for most people in the lower levels of Coruscant; there was limited access to sunlight in the densely fogged clouds that shrouded the higher structures. Her eyes were a milky green and were adorned by fine eyebrows, arched slightly concave down and thinning to a point. Her lips were always full and red, and perhaps her most attractive feature, aside her entirely intriguing and inquisitive eyes. She was not very tall, however, and her whole body reflected that height, with dainty, thin fingers and a weak, but thoroughly attractive, thinness all over.
Solstice Endac; or 'Sol' as so many had come to know her by.
She was very beautiful to him; despite the age difference. She was older than him – older by how much, he never knew, she had told him once that she did not know herself. Of all the people that lived in the lower levels, she was the most important to him – there was something about her – she was motherly toward him, a teacher, a storyteller, a playmate and a friend – but it went beyond that.
Her attention turned to the boy, her face glowed with beauty and youth, "what's up?" she smiled.
"Sol, I saw a Jedi," he mumbled softly, without any emotion.
"Don't be making any stories!" she scolded, laughing to herself, "stories like that will get you in trouble".
"No," he urged, perhaps a little to harshly, "I saw a Jedi and he was not awake".
'Not awake' was a special term – it was something she had taught him in case there was indeed, seriously a problem; the kind of problem which concerned the dead, extreme peril or danger, especially around them.
Her face changed from one of childish play, to dread almost instantly, "don't you dare be lying right now," she swallowed.
The boy's expression remained unchanged.
Solstice shot up and ran to him, kneeling in front of his small, child-like face, "where is the sleeping Jedi?" she asked quietly in his ear.
The boy pointed down the corridor.
Her eyes widened, "the Jedi is asleep in the trash compactor?"
The boy nodded, almost very nearly crying.
She rested a hand on his shoulder, "you stay here and you keep quiet," she ordered, then rose to her feet and headed down the corridor the boy had pointed at.
Muvo stood, seemingly perplexed, at a control panel, waving his thick and brutish hands around, slamming buttons intermittently and cursing.
"What's the matter Muvo?" she asked, attempting to peer through the viewing slit into the trash room.
"This stupid computer won't execute the stupid commands I give it!" Muvo raged, slamming his fists hard on the input panel, "blast you, you stupid-"
"Oh, maybe I can help?" Solstice asked politely, floating around Muvo coyly – she was just over half his size and perhaps a third of his girth.
"Maybe you can shut up and go and cook some dinner for the men in the cooking pod?" Muvo snapped, smiling his bloated mouth wide, exposing a most unpleasant set of teeth.
"Well I think your problem is that lever," she pointed through the viewing slit in the trash compactor, "over there".
"What?" Muvo yelled, narrowing his eyes, "that stupid boy must have left that lever open this morning!"
She smiled hesitantly up at the beastly alien, "I'll go and flick it for you".
"No," Muvo replied shyly, "I'll- I'll go and fix that… you make sure you stay here and don't touch nothing".
"I'll try," she teased, smiling happily up at him.
Muvo forced a smile and trudged heavily over to the door control panel and opened the mechanical door, once more.
She peered through the view slit again and rocked her head about for a better view, but the body the boy had claimed was in there, was not to be seen. Her eyes darted about, trying to scavenge a glimpse of the Jedi but all that she saw was a silver tube…
Her mouth dropped slightly. The cylinder looked the right shape and size – just as she had imagined it would.
Muvo stomped and shouted at the lever for a moment, before thrusting one trunk of a leg upward and kicking the rusted lever into its 'up' position. He smiled happily at the old steel and abused it some more for 'not having worked in the first place'.
She thought quickly, noticing Muvo's thumping legs were exiting the trash compactor; in moments, there would be a small cube the size of the boy and the Jedi and the Jedi's tool would be lost forever.
"What did I tell you?" Muvo roared, screaming at someone else.
Her attention jumped from the tube to the new person – it was the boy, whom was now crying.
Muvo bit his bloated lower lip, "oh… wel- oh come on don't do that!" he pleaded. His heart of iron, that the girl was thoroughly convinced of, seemed to have a soft-spot for little children.
Her mind jumped and she quietly and sneakily, slipped behind Muvo's giant rear, winking at the boy on the way, whom now turned on the tears even more so. She had explained to him, once, the importance of knowing 'just when to cry'. It seemed that lesson had not been fruitless.
She slid quietly into the trash compactor and stuck out one delicate little hand, grasping for the silver tool. The pile of waste upon which the hilt sat was just out of reach and she cursed. Glancing sideward for one moment.
Her eyes locked onto the body – it was true. There the Jedi Knight lay; his robes caused his face to be indistinct. The robes were charred and tattered. She wanted to get closer and examine this legendary figure but there was no time.
She looked her old dress up and down, "well… it's been fun but- I have to do this," she whispered and jumped into the cesspool.
She waded slowly, and only a few feet, to the pile on which the silver cylinder rested. She reached her hand once more and this time, wrapped her dainty fingers around the tool.
In that brief second, she felt as though a thousand voices whispered to her – some called out in what felt like great pain, others were incomprehensible. She released the silver tube and clutched her heart. She had felt this pain only once before; when her mother died. Something happened at the moment of her mother's death that flowed through her own body – she felt her mother die.
The tool glimmered in the dim light, lucidly reflecting her image.
She swallowed and grabbed the hilt one more time and this time, she grasped it tightly and pulled it free of the muck and filth it otherwise would most certainly have been buried with.
"Give it to me Solstice," Muvo said quietly. There was a great uneasiness in his voice.
She spun and smiled, "do you know what this i-"
"GIVE IT TO ME!" he screamed, edging closer to her.
She shook and fell backward, startled by Muvo's approach, "I- I-"
"You had to stick your nosy little face into this, didn't you?" Muvo asked implicitly, "you're always getting yourself into trouble".
"Listen Muvo," she stuttered, "I'm sor-"
"No, little one," Muvo soothed, "I'm sorry I'm going to have to kill you both now, because you don't LISTEN TO ME".
She trembled, noticing the boy, muffled under Muvo's massive forearm.
"Now, give me the Lightsaber and we can get through this quickly," he said, his voice almost sickeningly calm.
The boy's body flailed in quiet pain.
"Come closer Sol," Muvo waved his open palm, "let ol' Uncle Muvo fix you up good".
She scuttled backward and out of the trash pit, shaking in terror. In that moment, that brief moment of terror, someone spoke to her; reached out to her…
"…you can do this…you can save this one…"
She paused, calm and complacent… the voice sounded entirely like her mother's.
Muvo thrust forward with an outstretched palm and slapped her down like a ten-pin bowling ball collecting a 'strike'. She slid across the moist metallic landing and collided with a steel strut. She screamed in pain…
"…you can save this one…you can save this one…"
The voice sounded so close and so calm, almost just behind her ear. She rose to her feet and wiped her sleeve across her mouth, riding any filth from her face.
Muvo smiled, "such audacity child," he chuckled, "this is why you will die".
She stood resilient and glanced at the boy, whose body was now slumped and lifeless. Muvo lunged forward and in that thrust grabbed her close. Perhaps it was a mistake, perhaps it was the voices, perhaps it was something else – but her thumb gracefully slid onto the small red button on the hilt, clutched tightly in her hands.
The tube erupted into a purple and white light that passed straight through Muvo's chest and out of his back.
She held the hilt tightly and paused for a moment as the blade hummed and crackled softly.
Muvo paused, his mouth agape in horror. He glanced down at the girl, then at the warm blade in his chest. His grip loosened and the boy fell to the floor, as did the girl. Muvo's gargantuan body suspended for a moment on the blade, his head slumped downward.
When she was quite sure of what had just happened, she deactivated the hilt and the purple blade was swallowed neatly inside the hilt.
Muvo's body fell backwards and with an almighty thump, smashed into the garbage pit, his look of shock and terror still plastered on his face.
The girl turned her attention to the boy, who lay very still on the ground. She kneeled by his side, and rubbed his arm vigorously, "wake up! It's alright; he's gone to sleep now! He won't wake up anytime soon!" she shouted.
The boy's body remained very still. She shook him some more, "come on! Enough playing!" she called, patting his soft cheek.
Still, the boy remained quiet and limp.
"…there will be a time…a time when this will make sense…this will all make sense…"
She paused as a tear rolled down her cheek, "please wake him up! Whoever you are! Wake him up I know you can! You said I could save him! Please help me save him! Please!" she begged, misty-eyes darting around the room.
But there was silence.
She mourned for some time, before kissing the boy's forehead and rising to her feet, clutching the hilt of the dead Jedi Knight.
She looked around the room at the bodies… the Jedi's… Muvo's… and the boy's…
"I'm in trouble…" she whispered, snapping to the realization that three dead bodies and being found at the crime scene was often not well received by any observer.
She raced out of the trash compactor to her room. In time, the bodies would be found. She loved the boy like a son and a brother, but she could not stay in the lower levels. Not any longer at least.
A/N: Well, let me know what you thought of that :) As I said, I'm a long time fan, but not necessarily the most knowledgeable, so excuse any 'errors' or plot-holes, just enjoy this for what it is, a story for everyone's entertainment!